Facebook A/B Testing – Stop Guessing Start Testing!

Once and for all, there is NO right answer. The best advice I can give you is to TEST.

Sure, there are certain guidelines you should follow. If your main goal is collecting leads, then the most logical thing would be to use lead ads or conversion objectives. But, if you want to ask which video is better or what bid you should put, my answer would stay the same – TEST.

I’ve been doing PPC on Facebook for almost 2 and a half years now, and it’s always different. Even when I think I know what the best audience in my campaigns will be, I never stop being surprised.

In some cases, video ads will work much better than other ad types, and in others, not. Sometimes “Parents” will be my most expensive audience, and sometimes LAL audiences won’t spend $1.

You should find what is the best combination for your activities.

But the real question is:

Why don’t advertisers test?

Well, I think there are 2 main reasons, with one motive behind them.

Afraid of wasting money – that’s right, a lot of the advertisers won’t test different things just because they think it will hurt their performance, what eventually will lead to losing a client.

Don’t know how to do it right – yep, you heard it. A lot of the advertisers just don’t have the slightest idea how to perform a good test, with solid conclusions.

What’s the motive? Fear.
How do you deal with it? You guessed it, TEST.

If you don’t know how to A\B test correctly, start reading!
There are tons of great articles roaming around the web that are just waiting to be read.

Now, about fear? Believe me that it pays off to think outside the box and try new things. It pays off even more when you succeed 😊
Remember – don’t rely on others’ experiences. Dive into the deep water and make some mistakes – you’ll learn to swim faster than you think. And if you want to limit the room for mistakes, start analyzing your creatives early on.

Facebook A/B Testing Options:

So, have you decided to give Facebook A/B Testing a go? What tests should you try?
First, remember that all your tests should run on a low budget.
I always allocate 10%-20% of my budget for testing different things. That way, I always keep my customers happy with good results and learn what I should and shouldn’t do for my next campaign.

A few main things you want to test:

Campaign Objectives:

Running an e-com website? Try conversion, try traffic, even try post engagement with a link in the text. You’ll never know what’s going to work better. Create 1 campaign of each and see what works better – after 2-3 days, you should see which produces the better results.

Placement:

Please stop saying that only news feed works. Maybe it was true a year or even two years ago.
Want to get cheaper ads? Try the right column.
Campaign won’t spend? Open the Audience Network (works 80% of the time).
Will it really be cheaper or will you get better results? I guess you won’t know until you TEST.

Try using placement optimization and then looking at Facebook Breakdowns. Not feeling it? Not a problem – create the same audience multiple times with different placements.
Just remember to give it some time. You can’t close an ad set after spending only $50 and then say it didn’t work.

Bidding Options:

This is probably the type of questions I get the most.
Should you use manual bid or let Facebook use automatic bid? Optimize for impressions or clicks?
Well, I suggest you open separate ad sets with different bidding methods and see how each one of them works.
Every scenario is different, so I can’t really give you one conclusive answer. Facebook A/B Testing your campaigns is the only way to know for sure.

Creative:

So, what’s the best combination? 4 different creatives in 1 ad set? Same creative with a different copy? Maybe 1 ad per ad set?
Well, it all depends on the budget you have.

Let’s say you spend $300 a day. You can afford to test several creatives in order to find your best fit… But note that you should not try to use more than 3-4 creatives because then Facebook will have too many options and, at the end, you’ll have a tough time understanding what works best.

If you have less than $300, you may have less breathing room, but I would still recommend testing 2 different creatives to try to maximize your performance.
In general, don’t use only 1 ad, because you’ll never know if another ad would have performed better.

Again – that’s just my opinion and, in most cases thus far, it has worked perfectly!

Patience is a Virtue

Remember one thing – be patient.

It won’t happen in 24 hours and sometimes not even in 48 hours.

Give your tests enough time so you can understand their results and implement the right changes in the future. You’ll see that you’ll become much more comfortable with Facebook A/B Testing and find the best way for your own campaigns to succeed.